Bad science or expensive con: either way, I’m sticking with my skincare regime

Skincare relaxes me but makeup stresses me out. There is a simple reason for this: I am bad at makeup. I am so bad at makeup that even on my most hungover, jetlagged, puffy-eyed-from-cry-watching-Steel-Magnolias-and-drinking-gin-the-night-before days, I look better than I do on my best nights out wearing makeup. I was so excited when I bought one of those Charlotte Tilbury eyeshadow palettes because, a friend told me, “even an idiot can do a smoky eye with these”. Idiot-proof smoky eyes!

I gazed upon my palette like the Nazis in Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark looking at a religious relic. Alas, this holy find had about as beneficial an effect on my face as the Ark did on the Nazis, whose faces melted like wax when they looked within.

“Waddya think of my smoky eyes?” I asked my boyfriend, fluttering my painted lids at him.

“Is that a fashion term for looking like you’ve got two black eyes?” he asked, in his best I’m-being-supportive voice.

It’s not surprising that someone who was bottom of their art class throughout school should fail to become Rembrandt when painting her own face. So I do get that this is more about my shortcomings than it is about makeup. But I also slightly resent that I’m supposed to become a Rembrandt just because I’m a woman, and women are expected to wear makeup when they go out. If you don’t, it’s seen as something of a statement, like not brushing your hair (and don’t even get me started on my hair issues). I make enough statements in my day job not to want to bother at night, so I keep giving it a good go, because I live in hope that one day I’ll figure out how to apply concealer without resembling a beige clown.

Source: theguardian